It's starting to look like the end of an era for Ubuntu users as Canonical mull the creation of an ISO that won't fit onto a CDR. The question is, does it matter? Canonical owes at least part of its success with Ubuntu Linux to the unique way that it has been distributed. From the start it has been available as a downloadable ISO image and a free CD, posted at no cost to the user. This was great news for people who wanted to install Linux but did not have the luxury of a decent Internet connection. In a sense, installing via a CDR image has always been like a kind of cache, in that you're moving part of the content that you need onto permanent storage rather than pulling it through the network connection

There are even "business card" CDs, but I've never seen them at my local retailers.

Theres a reason for that, they're only 50Mb and are squared off, they should only be used in drives where you lock the disc onto the spindle, I've seen a few get stuck in standard desktop drives and you can never use them in slot loaders.

I don't doubt there are compatibility problems with biz card CDs, but still... the geek/chic factor! When someone in the meeting has a heart attack when their Windows system with 5 ad-serving toolbars in Internet Explorer 6 chokes and dies, and you just calmly say "Let me have a look", whip out your wallet, pull a Frickin Operating System out of it, and in 20 seconds have a complete (and completely new) system running on their supposedly "dead" system.